


Sparring Circles and Ice

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Series: Archer, Battle-Mage, Trickster, and Warrior [8]
Category: Norse Mythology, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, GFY, Gen, Post-Movie(s), gratuitous abuse of mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-02-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 09:07:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/696618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Does my brother ask you to take on another quest?" Thor at least doesn't speak loudly, though Sif glares at him nonetheless. It is not a question she wants spoken aloud.</p><p>"I do not know. He has not said." Sif shoulders her glaive, stalking through the scattering warriors toward the palace. "I will tell you later if he asks me to do such a thing, and does not insist that it is a quest that must be carried out alone."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sparring Circles and Ice

Loki has not provided any further tasks for her since her return from Jotunheim, and Sif is beginning to worry what he might be thinking to have her do. She's almost tempted to stand guard outside his door once more, save that she can already hear Fandral's insinuations and not-so-friendly gibes about doing so. She doesn't care to hear them, nor to see the annoyance cross Thor's face when he hears them - or hears of them.

And hear of them, he would, because she wouldn't allow the insult to her honor pass - nor would she allow it to be quietly dealt with by some token payment or sparring session.

Scowling, Sif binds her hair back before heading for the training grounds, which have once again become a haunt of hers, as they had been when she and Thor and the Warriors Three were between adventures. The usual assortment of practicing warriors are present, and Sif looks for someone who has no sparring partner, settling easily into the rhythm of practice, with its contradiction of heightened attention and easier dismissing of the extraneous.

So she's aware of the stir in spectators, and their clearing of space for Loki to stand just clear of the ring, in a circle of space all his own, but ignores it as unimportant until she's defeated her opponent. Only then, while the other warrior exits the circle, does she turn to meet his gaze, raising an eyebrow without speaking. Waiting for him to either indicate she should follow him, or to reveal what she's done by giving her a command in front of others.

He watches her for a long moment before he smiles, sharp and dangerous, stepping into the ring with a deliberateness that makes her wonder what he's up to now. Weaponless and challenging her to spar while she still holds her glaive.

Snorting, she settles into a ready crouch, watching him to see what he might do. Circling the perimeter of the ring as he does the same, waiting for him to make the first move, peripherally aware of the thickening crowd. Someone, no doubt, has gone to tell Thor and in the doing, spread word that will reach the ears of the Warriors Three. No matter the outcome of the sparring bout itself, Loki has opened the door to more speculation and gossip.

A flicker of movement makes her react, shifting the glaive to meet an unexpected weapon, ice shattering and spraying her with shards. A knife or magic, that she'd expect from Loki, but not ice, though perhaps she ought to have. The Jotun had to be right, in one thing, at least, that Loki was born of Jotunheim rather than Asgard.

"Do you regret your decisions now, Sif?" Loki's voice is entirely too close to her ear, and Sif drives an elbow backward to try to catch him, and strikes nothing but air.

"No." She hisses as she feels something score across her thigh where her guard had opened up a little. A knife this time, and not one made of ice.

Loki laughs, cold and cutting as the wind on Jotunheim, and moves toward her, ducking under her strike at his shoulder. Fast as a striking snake, his hand wrapping around her wrist, cold seeping through the leather guard there for a moment, and numbing her hand enough that she has to take a one-handed grip on her glaive. She stomps down on his foot in return, shoving away to break his grip on her.

She can hear the crowd murmuring, thinks perhaps she can hear the louder call of questions in familiar voices, but Sif ignores them in favor of pressing forward, forcing sluggish fingers to wrap around the handle of her glaive, and putting her weight behind a strike that Loki slides away from like water.

"You need to do better than that," Loki taunts, his voice seemingly right next to her ear again, and Sif snarls, whirling to sweep her glaive through where Loki's head would be if he were behind her. She focuses, listening and watching for any flicker of movement that would give away where Loki actually was - she doesn't trust what she sees being anything other than an illusion now. It's how he fights.

What had begun as a strange sparring session is, she knows, rapidly becoming a real fight, a desire to prove she can out-fight Loki, even if she doesn't have his cunning or deviousness. Even if it's mostly her getting tagged with scratches and taunts as Loki proves he can evade her and wear her down. Waiting until she's panting, with muscles trembling faintly under sweat-sheened skin before he does anything more, striking hard and fast.

Her glaive is in his hands before she can properly register he's taken it from her, and Sif snarls again, launching herself at him with bare hands. Forcing herself to move at her limits despite her exhaustion, managing to wrap her fingers around his throat, and shoving him to the ground. Her knees hit the packed earth to either side of Loki's ribs, and Sif can feel her glaive trapped between them.

The gleam in his eyes makes her wonder if he'd allowed her this victory, but she banishes that thought from her mind. She'll take the victory, no matter where it came from, and she smiles ferally down at him, waiting until he spreads his hands in a gesture of surrender - though she's unsurprised he does not give her the satisfaction of saying he yields.

Shifting, Sif stands, reaching down to take her glaive before she lets her attention widen to the audience once more. The Warriors Three and Thor are indeed in the crowd, watching her and Loki with varying expressions - Hogun is unreadable, Thor looking torn between pride and concern, Volstagg strangely subdued, and Fandral frowning with suspicion.

Loki steps close to her, crowding her toward the edge of the circle - to leave it to others, which Sif is willing to do, and perhaps some other reason for keeping close. A reason that is revealed in words spoken barely above a whisper. "You will require your weapons and your warmest clothing, warrior mine. Return to the door I showed you when you've fetched such."

With that, he leaves as Thor and the Warriors Three come to surround Sif, questions clear in their expressions, though they at least have the sense not to ask them here.

"I will tell you later." If she has the chance, because there's something off about what Loki had said. Last time, she'd been to Jotunheim on a diplomatic mission, as poorly as she still thinks she's suited to such a task, and had left her weapons behind. Now, he wishes her to take weapons? It makes little sense.

"Does my brother ask you to take on another quest?" Thor at least doesn't speak loudly, though Sif glares at him nonetheless. It is not a question she wants spoken aloud.

"I do not know. He has not said." Sif shoulders her glaive, stalking through the scattering warriors toward the palace. "I will tell you later if he asks me to do such a thing, and does not insist that it is a quest that must be carried out alone." She can see Fandral open his mouth out of the corner of her eyes, and adds, "I shall join you later; I wish to bathe alone."

Thor claps her on the shoulder, a smile on his face that is bright and hopeful. Sif isn't sure if she can make good on what she has said, and his open expression causes a brief twist of guilt, though she can't know yet what will happen. "We shall await you, then."

* * *

Loki is somewhat surprised to see Sif arriving without Thor or the Traitors Three in tow, but it is strangely reassuring to know she had shaken her favored companions when he had not explicitly told her to keep them away from this journey. Particularly since he doubts they'd be willing to allow her to travel with him, or for him to leave at all - not that they could truly stop him. Better that there is some time between their leave-taking and the discovery of it.

She watches him as she approaches, and says quietly, "They wished only to know if it were another quest which you would send me upon, and I told them that if it were, I would tell them so long as you did not forbid company."

The offer of information that he did not ask for is more of a surprise, but again a pleasant one for the most part. Perhaps Sif truly will hold to her oath, and not betray it, though Loki still does not trust that when she has broken an oath already.

"We will not need their company." Loki dismisses the idea with a small curl of his lip. "Nor shall you be returning to speak with them, save if I should have need of an envoy to the All-Father."

That causes surprise to spread across Sif's face, and Loki does not give her time to react before he steps through onto the branches of Yggdrasil, the paths among them familiar and welcome. Sif follows him swiftly enough, and there is no talking in the pressing dark between Asgard and Jotunheim. Loki knows there is no returning, and while he is uncertain he wishes to claim the kingship of Jotunheim, it is better than remaining in Asgard where he has little more than unpleasant memories and pretense he does not care to play at right now.

Jotunheim is dark and cold as he recalls, and Loki draws in a deep breath, letting the cold seep into him, knowing his skin is taking on the blue shade of his Jotun blood, his eyes shifting from green to a bloody red. At least they are not blue as he recalls them being too often in the mirror of late.

Sif steps onto the ice behind him, taking up a position behind and to his right, as if she is a trusted companion guarding his back from treachery. It makes him quirk one corner of his mouth in a wry smile before he shrugs, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. She is paler than usual, and her expression is almost blank.

"You said the Jotun called Helblindi Laufeyson waited for you at this end of the path?" Loki doesn't wait for her nod to look over the landscape, searching for a sign of someone among the crags of ice, the darker shadows and paler swathes where it looked as if fresh snow had fallen.

"I still watch this place." The voice comes from a shadow cast by a spire of ice shattered partway to where it might have once reached. "I had not thought you would so swiftly respond to such a message as I gave your bondwoman."

Loki lifts his chin slightly, his eyes narrowing at the buried insinuation that perhaps he might not have come at all, even given an answer to his offer. "I made the offer in good faith, and held it as an oath once accepted, even if only by one of the Jotnar."

There's silence a moment, and a shifting in the shadow, before the Jotun stepped out where he could be seen. Helblindi is not terribly much taller than Loki, indeed, far less than he was entirely expecting. He watches Loki for a long moment with a contemplative expression, before he shrugs. "I will show you what remains of our battered realm, so you might see how great a task it is you have undertaken." He glances at Loki's armor, a small smirk curling one corner of his mouth. "You would do better if you were not in Aesir armor, little prince, or keep to your Aesir-pale mask."

That much is likely true, after all that has happened after Thor's interrupted coronation, yet Loki hesitates to leave his skin as bare as Helblindi clearly is, only a kilt wrapped about his hips that reaches to his knees.

"Your bondwoman will be hard-pressed to keep you alive otherwise." Helblindi turns to lead the way, shrugging his shoulders as he speaks. Loki narrows his eyes, glaring a long moment before he draws back on the mask of Aesir skin. He will leave dressing as a Jotun for another time, if ever he does such a thing.

"It is ill-done to mock a people, and we would react rather badly to the idea of an Aesir princeling daring to wear a mask of Jotun skin." There's another shrug of Helblindi's shoulders once Loki falls in beside him, refusing to simply follow. "Better to think you Aesir until it is proved you are not, if indeed you can."

Loki does not point out that Helblindi has apparently accepted him, at least to some extent. Perhaps it is because he is Laufeyson, perhaps there is some other reason. Why, after all, was he waiting just where this particular path emerged on Jotunheim? There are few who know of the paths along the branches of Yggdrasil, and Loki has not heard of any Jotun walking those paths alone, as Helblindi would have had to do to find the right path and the right door to know this path leads to Asgard.

They walk in silence until they reach the broken spires where Thor had initiated battle only a single long year before. Where Loki had negotiated with Laufey to bring him to Asgard where Loki could kill him. There had been beauty here, once, but it's all gone to powder and shards.

"It was the temple before the All-Father shattered it, or so I've been told." Helblindi looks at Loki out of the corner of his eye. "It was where the Casket was kept, and where the kings of Jotunheim were consecrated and crowned. My elder brother was consecrated here, but none have seen him since the All-Father destroyed the temple."

And this is where Loki will have to begin, if he's to achieve the recompense for his assault upon Jotunheim, as he's already made payment for the deaths upon Asgard. It will leave only Midgard to call for his blood, and he will concern himself with that later, after he has settled accounts here, though it might call for greater a price than he'd anticipated needing to pay.

"Are there any who recall it as it once stood, or shall I build as I desire?"

Helblindi chuckles, a grin spreading across his face. "If you are who you claim to be, than the ice will flow at your command, and however you should make it will be how the temple should look now. It is ice, not stone."

Ice that answers only to a king, and then, only a king who is of Jotun heritage - and perhaps something more. Loki doesn't enjoy the niggling sense that he is not being told all, that there is something hidden at work, trying to manipulate him to its own ends.

"Why should the Casket only answer to a king of Jotun blood?" He will use it, but not yet. Not until he has some better sense of why it responded to him, even though he had not been king of Jotunheim, and Laufey had yet lived.

There is silence for a long moment, Helblindi watching him with a hooded expression. "Not of Jotun blood. Of Jotunheim."

"Then why could I make use of it while Laufey yet lived?" Loki challenges, shifting his weight slightly in case there is violence offered. "I was king of Asgard, then. Not of Jotunheim."

"A prince is consecrated, and a king acknowledged. Yet I would have no claim upon the throne, even acknowledged as a king. The temple was destroyed, and the Casket taken before I was born."

And both temple and Casket were needed to consecrate a prince, a consecration necessary for a valid claim to the throne of Jotunheim or the use of the Casket. An initiation, likely, to whatever secrets the Casket held, but why would they initiate an infant as Loki had been, and one who was small for a Jotun beside? Unless it were because he was born during their war with Asgard, perhaps as a safe measure should Laufey be killed in the fighting.

"And who is acknowledged king on Jotunheim?"

Helblindi smirks, and shakes his head. "There are none who could make claim to the throne, save my elder brother." He looks over at Loki with the smirk still on his face. "If it could be proved he had found his way home, and that he were capable of the acts of a king, there are those who would acknowledge him as such."

Loki remains silent for a long moment, contemplating the ruins of the temple, and what he information he had coaxed from Helblindi. The temple, his to rebuild in what image he desired, and Jotunheim his for the ruling if he wished it. He smiles to himself, summoning the Casket from the pocket dimension it has resided in since he froze Heimdall on the Bifrost. That his skin is bleeding pale from it like blood, turning to Jotun blue as he directs the energies of the Casket, he ignores, as he does Helblindi and Sif alike. There is only himself and the ice, and rebuilding what was destroyed.

* * *

Sif struggles not to shiver in the cold, standing outside the room Loki had carved for himself out of ice, his skin Jotun-blue and ridged with patterns she could not read. For now, he slept, the glittering evidence of his labors rising from the ruins where it could be seen as he stepped from his room in the second shattered building that had stood close by. A palace, likely, and all of it enough to chill her to the bone without a fire to warm her.

She refuses to think it is more than the cold that makes her shiver, refuses to allow herself to fear even though she is surrounded by Jotnar and only left alive and unharmed because they see her as thrall to Loki. It is a sting to her pride that it is that, and not respect for her skill as a warrior, that keeps her alive.

"No one will test themselves against you while you are bondwoman to our king, unless they are also given such an honor." Helblindi is sitting in the shadows of the ice once more, leaning against the wall of Loki's room, and watching her. "If ever he releases you from his service, they will not give you such consideration."

"Then I will be without anyone to spar with, for I doubt he will take others into his service, nor shall he release me from the same." Sif is very certain of the latter, at least, if not as certain of the former.

Helblindi chuckles. "A king should not have so few bondmen as he has now. There will be others, though perhaps not other bondwomen." He glances sideways at Sif. "They will test themselves against you, but it will not change that you are the chief among them, being bondwoman to our king before any other."

"Is there no woman of Jotunheim who is a warrior, then? Or is that no woman would wish to be a warrior in service of the king?" Sif is both angry and smug that she will still be the only woman warrior among men, if the answer to the first is no.

"There are women who were once warriors, but they wish to raise their children rather than to leave their raising to a woman." Helblindi's words make no sense to Sif, and she frowns. He smirks at her irritation, but adds, "A warrior does not bear children, but any Jotun may be either the father or the mother of a child. So one who wishes to bear and raise a child will not be a warrior until the child is grown or dead."

Sif stares, knowing her innate disgust for the mingling of roles in such a way - for one person to take on both the roles of a woman and of a man, even if not at the same time. "And this is normal?"

"Can you doubt that even your king might do such a thing?" Helblindi's smirk is gone, but he watches her with an expression that makes Sif suppress a shiver. "I know of each of his children, those he fathered and the one he mothered, though I've not met any of his sons."

Another shiver runs through Sif, and she cannot repress this one. She had deliberately forgotten the long-ago incident, when Loki's distraction had given Thor the chance to get close enough to a cheating mason to destroy him. A distraction that had resulted in a terrible shame, a dishonor that Odin had hidden from most of Asgard, but could not have hidden from those companions closest to Thor and thus to Loki.

"The monster Odin bound as his steed." Sif can hear the undisguised disgust in her voice, and from the hardening of Helblindi's voice, he didn't miss it either.

"The boy who never was given a chance to learn he might have another shape, and now never shall." Helblindi's voice is cold and sharp as the wind. "That is a dishonor on the All-Father's head, not his own nor upon his mother's. Do not think it otherwise, daughter of Asgard."

Helblindi rose before Sif could form another reply, and moved away, toward the rebuilt temple. Leaving her to think on the conversation, and to her own conflicted emotions.

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of Loki being consecrated to Jotunheim is borrowed from FoolWithAPen.


End file.
